Free River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053) by David Riley Bertsch

as the boss called her, and that, along with the tote bag stuffed with fifty-dollar bills, was good enough for them.
    They continued to take out their rage on the lodgepole stumps. The ground around them was littered with spent shells and cigarette butts: off-brand menthols for Randy and hand rolled for Tinny.
    The old hunting camp was pretty nice for two poor boys from Idaho. They guessed it belonged to some rich family from Boise. Who knew how their boss had found it?
    The cabin was up on a bluff overlooking the river in the Salmon-Challis wilderness. The River of No Return, it was called. Randy liked the way that sounded, considering they were career criminals who’d just kidnapped someone. Tinny was oblivious to the kismet.
    The structure was out in the open atop the hill, which would have been disconcerting if there were anyone around to see what they were doing. But there was no major road along this stretch of the river, only a few logging trails that provided access to the hunting camps in the hills. The occasional drift boat slipped down the inky current chasing steelhead, but that was two thousand feet down the steep bank. The fishermen were too focused on waiting for a twitch from their floats or the tips of their plugging rods to notice anything else around them.
    â€œLet’s get out of here,” Randy said, taking his hands from his ears, where they had been protecting him from the percussion of the AR-15. “I’m sick of smoked salmon and jerky.”
    Tinny responded too loudly, his chainsaw-brand ear muffs still on: “Not ’posed to leave, ’member? Boss says so.” He brought the rifle back up to his shoulder to fire again.
    Randy yanked the muffs off his partner’s head and pushed the barrel of the gun down. “Then you stay. I can’t take it. I don’t even like fish.” He started toward the shed.
    Dammit! Tinny ran to catch up with Randy, who was checking on Esma, making sure she couldn’t fly the coop.
    â€œI don’t know if you not liking fish is an emergency.” Tinny was referring to the boss’s exception to the “never leave camp” rule.
    â€œShut up.” Randy made tracks to the truck and turned the radio on. Raucous country music filled the cabin. Tinny jumped in.
    When they got to the town of Salmon, they decided it would be prudent to stop throwing their empty beer cans and cigarette butts out the truck window. They didn’t need any trouble from the cops.
    Tinny pointed at an oversize bear statue on the east bank of the river, welcoming visitors crossing over from the west. “Look at them fish.”
    The bear was fishing for steelhead and salmon, represented in dull bronze at its feet. These fish kept the town alive through the fall and winter, bringing fishermen in from hundreds of miles around.
    Randy gave his sidekick a dubious look. “Gimme a beer. I ain’t gonna pay $3.50 down here before I get a buzz in the truck.”
    Tinny listened and obliged, as was becoming his way with Randy.
    â€œYou think maybe we oughta catch us some of those?” he asked, handing the beer over the center console.
    â€œI ’ready told you I don’t like fish.”
    â€œSorry.”
    Randy wrenched the old pickup into a spot with a handicapped sign right in front of Bertram’s Brewery. “We’ll try this place.” He appreciated the neon beer-mug sign.
    â€œLooks fancy.”
    â€œYou never had a microbrew?”
    â€œNope.” Tinny wondered whether this was some small-portions bullshit like expensive restaurants did with their meals.
    The two men hustled inside. The sun had set behind the highbluff along the river in the west, and it was cold. Earlier that afternoon the wind had started to blow consistently from the Pacific, where the spawning salmonids came from, bringing with it an early snowstorm. The drift boats outside the small pub sported canvas covers to keep the